Anyone can play fantasy football, but to be the most successful manager possible, knowledge of more than merely the top 160 mixed-league picks is essential.
This game changes dramatically and unexpectedly. Injuries are certain to happen, roles will quickly shift, and by October you might have already turned over one-quarter of your roster -- even if you're winning. Be prepared to pounce when pickups present themselves, when angling to balance trades with creative throw-ins, or even simply when your good buddy calls you on the Wednesday before opening night saying he has an opening in his 14-team half-PPR league (to which, naturally, you do not want to reply, "Wow, that's deeper than I'm used to!").
All that is where this column comes in. Every preseason, I compile a list of deep sleepers, players who by all accounts will not -- and arguably should not -- be drafted in a standard 10-team ESPN PPR league, but who have decent-to-good odds at contributing sometime during the season. If an opportunity arises for any one of them, they could be just the key to a fantasy championship run.
To be clear, this is a deep sleepers column, not a space where you'll find "regular" sleepers such as Trevor Lawrence, Dameon Pierce, Rondale Moore or Irv Smith Jr., though I very much like all four as value selections. This list takes the sleeper exercise a step deeper, digging into the pool of less-familiar names, and of course with the heightened challenge comes a greater rate of failure. Often in this space we're seeking skills over roles, and roles sometimes don't align, even over 17 games.